bao.kamo

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Shot of our backyard, nearly midday sun, our early morning.

Gasteracantha cancriformis you strange, strange, pretty, tiny, weaving, funny fellow.

It's nice to have you still around.

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The joy of reading anthropology . . .

¡Ay!

••• Among rocks and rubble, a getaway, hidden gem, for climbing, camping, and cheese! Road trip on the Silver Route. Passing Aculco de Espinoza, just north of Cerro Pelón, lies the pueblo of Concepción. It's near its waterfall where the owls sang: Bú. •••

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Beautiful. Gracias, Dani.

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Homenaje

Carlos Serrano Sánchez (1942 - 2025)

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••• Almost a decade after first arriving on Mexican soil, I finally received a permanent residency visa. Tough birth as ze Germans say. Draining, numbing bureaucracy; finally done, completed, all behind. Kafka's Josef had it worse. Then, within less than a week, first guide training at the walled city of Zamá, at Akumal, "place of turtles", and at Yax-Muul, among speleothems and bats. This chapter is starting to look quite pretty. •••

••• Nostalgic view of Popocatépetl from the foot of the dormant White Woman. Fieldwork, 2018. Us students of Anthropology from ENAH and UNAM taking a course in cartography and geography led by Professor Villar. The last image is of researcher Hugo Delgado Granados placing the plaque that commemorates the Ayoloco Glacier on Iztaccíhuatl. It was declared extinct in the same year. •••

••• Further impressions from Vietnam's Far North.

I provided guided tours at Hoàng Liên National Park and Phan Xi Păng mountain, near Sa Pa, Lao Cai. At only 19 it seemed surreal, undefined, yet undeniably significant. Experiencing those culturally diverse lands of which I understood so little, spending my days out there in the forests, hills and mountains, the nights beneath the glow of my room’s small lamp, covered in thick blankets,

reading anything I managed to get my hands on, anything in English really, cooking on that tiny camping stove, improvised, tight-fit, happy, picturing all that might lie ahead, all that might unfold… Those days certainly have left their mark. I'm glad they did. •••

••• First job as a tour guide at Hoàng Liên National Park and Phan Xi Păng mountain, "The Roof of Indochina". Portering, trekking, mountaineering, through cloud- and bambooforests, on tough, muddy terrain. High humidity, sporadic rainfall. Stationed at Sa Pa. Cold nights, small room. Thick, golden layers of fog at dusk. •••

••• Tributary of the Yangtze, Jinsha Jiang traverses, at times with torrential violence, the heartland of the Naxi people. Here, it cuts down south, parting the massif surrounding Haba and Yulong Snow Mountain. Both peaks towering at well above 5,000 m. Yulong, the "Jade Dragon", only revealing itself for those that push on, two, three hours to the northeast. Lying there, inconspicuous, in ageless slumber. I spent a couple of days by foot on Haba's side of the gorge, then continued by hitching rides from Jiangbiancun to Habacun and Gyalthang. •••

••• First tour by foot, nights in tent. Kittens roaming beyond the fence. Commencement of a journey, unconcluded. Ceremony in hindsight. Crossing the Scottish Highlands from Eastern to Western Ross, breaking at Loch Alsh. Whiteout near Càrn Eige. •••